8/25/2021

About the lab

Our Team

Goals of the lab

  • To implement new & emerging technologies to support data-driven decisionmaking
  • To collaborate with policymakers, academic institutions and stakeholders to develop smart, socially just and healthy cities
  • To serve as a resource for Bloustein masters programs

4th Floor Renovations

  • RUCI Lab has been under construction since the Spring
  • Computer lab with collaborative spaces for students

How it Started

How it’s Going

Our Research

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesistancy

  • How do public transportation barriers impact it?
  • Survey dataset was joined with scraped vaccine site data to create model.
  • Respondents were matched to the nearest vaccine site using GIS.
  • In general, the vaccinated were likely to travel further than the vaccinated.

Estimating Protest Crowd Size With Tweets

  • Project integrates Twitter data with official and crowd-sourced data on NYC racial justice protests
  • Clusters correspond to locations with protests taking place.

COVID-19 Movement and Mobility Patterns in NJ

  • Anonymized cell phone location data used to track visits to public spaces in NJ towns and counties

  • Report by Dean Thakuriah covered movement patterns during height of lockdown

Key findings

  • During March shutdown, visits fell 80% compared to beginning of the month
  • Northern and central counties had greatest decline
  • People spent more time and travelled farther to stores, stocking up at the start of the pandemic
  • Differences in food shopping apparent in areas with greater poverty
  • Future report will examine how NJ reopened from May to present.

Opportunities to get involved

  • We work with Bloustein students on a per-project basis depending on availability and resources.
  • GIS, R, or Python experience is highly desirable

Q & A

Questions?

Learn More About RUCI

Thank you!